In 1967, Joseph Epstein was hired as part of an editorial team tasked with revising and updating the Encyclopedia Britannica. Not long thereafter, Mortimer J. Adler, the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany and the great evangelist of popularizing philosophy, took over the project. Of Adler, Epstein writes, “Mortimer’s intentions were of the highest; his grasp of reality of the lowest.” But Adler was one of many fascinating characters Epstein describes, and certainly not the only Jew:

Clifton (or Kip, as he was known) Fadiman’s story was that he had hoped to go to graduate school in English at Columbia, but was told that the English department there already had accepted Mr. Lionel Trilling, its way of saying that the graduate-student quota for Jews was filled, thank you very much.

Kip Fadiman had a Jewish problem, and not only with the Columbia English department. Born in Brooklyn in 1904, the son of a druggist and a nurse, he expressed his discomfort with his Jewishness through the novel mode of extreme pretension. At a meeting about the reorganization of Britannica, he composed a rubric for the new table of contents that ran: “The beginning of cinema: the curious confluence of an emerging technology and a surgent entrepreneurial ethnic group.” When this was read aloud in one of our many editorial meetings, Robert Hazo passed a note to me that read, “I think he means the Jews got there first.”

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.